The new tech jobs that quietly shape our culture

Most social media and messaging platforms have some kind of moderation and selection policy. This week Twitter’s version is under fire for its failure to stem online harassment. As BuzzFeed’s report makes clear, the sporadic inconsistency of Twitter’s “ad-hocracy” makes its operations unusually opaque, even to those inside the company. But lack of transparency is a hallmark of moderation throughout the Internet, as a longform report earlier this year in the Verge made abundantly clear: While public debates rage about government censorship and free speech on college campuses, customer content management constitutes the quiet transnational transfer of free-speech decisions to the private, corporately managed corners of the internet where people weigh competing values in hidden and proprietary ways. … moderation practices with global ramifications have been marginalized within major firms,…